The pre-election campaign has officially started and will finish 2 days before the voting. The second round will be held, despite the claims of Artashes Geghamyan, the 3rd in the race, who was insisting on declaring the elections invalid and on holding new voting. All the oppositional candidates speak about mass falsifications taken place during the elections. However, none of them has concrete facts to prove it. The opposition has submitted to the prosecutor’s office 7 applications concerning violations of the electoral code. For three of them criminal cases have already started. We shall note that efforts to falsify the results were undertaken not only by the supporters of Robert Kocharian. The incumbent President said recently that he was aware of facts proving that lot of falsifications were made in favor of his main rival, Stepan Demirchyan.
So, not only the supporters of the incumbent President played a dirty upon Robert Kocharian, but also his rivals. Those men are now calling on violent acts against the authorities and provoke people to illegal actions. The anti-constitutional calls heard at demonstrations were condemned also by the head of the OSCE Observation Mission Peter Eicher. During a meeting with Stepan Demirchyan Mr. Eicher has expressed his concern with the irresponsible statements of some of his supporters. “Violence and threats should not exist in a democratic society,” the European observer has stressed.
The condemnation by the observers of the aggressive position of the participants of unsanctioned demonstrations probably means that they can understand the actions of the authorities who have started to punish the disturbers of public order. As of February 25 about 117 most aggressive participants were arrested – about 50 of them were imprisoned for 15 days; others were fined and released. It appeared that some of the arrested were convicted earlier of different crimes.
